


Strange as it Seems (she's the one i'm after)

by unbuffhufflepuff



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bellamy sings Clarke heartsongs, Chaos Ensues, Clarke doesn't know what to do, F/M, Fluff, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbuffhufflepuff/pseuds/unbuffhufflepuff
Summary: Bellamy is hopelessly in love with Clarke. It only takes an untimely earthquake in the middle of Clarke’s MRI to help her realize it.Or, Clarke hears people’s innermost thoughts through song and dance, which doesn’t seem like a problem until she realizes Bellamy is in love with her.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 102





	Strange as it Seems (she's the one i'm after)

It starts when Clarke is walking to get lunch after experiencing an earthquake in the middle of an MRI. She remembers the machine glitching, playing several songs at once as the machine shook along with the rest of the city. 

_Never again_ , she thinks and shutters thinking about the experience. 

She hears someone behind her singing, which isn’t an uncommon occurrence in the city, except that every time she turns around it’s a different person singing the same song: The Maine’s “Am I Pretty?” 

The first time she turns around, it’s a twenty-something-year-old woman with headphones on singing, “Am I pretty? Do people like me yet?”

She shrugs it off. She figures the woman just didn’t realize she was singing aloud. 

But then it’s a teenage boy who has a skip in his step when he does a spin and belts out, “Is there a party? Am I invited?” 

It’s weird, and it continues. 

Another teenager, sitting on a bench, tucking her hair behind her ears while looking down at her feet softly sings, “No one adores me yet.”

Clarke stops in the middle of the sidewalk and watches it unfold around her. No one else is paying any attention to those singing. _This is a really sad flashmob_ , Clarke thinks to herself when another woman is suddenly in front of her, extending her arm in Clarke’s direction as she sings, “So make me up in a shade that fits me. Tell me, love, oh, am I pretty.” 

Clarke furrows her eyebrows and asks, “Is this some kind of flashmob?” The woman gives her a weird look before turning around and walking away, and when she looks for the two teenagers, they’re both nowhere to be seen. 

She writes it off as a weird occurrence until she’s at work and her coworker Maya suddenly starts singing “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” as a ballad. Clarke is at her desk in the office of the art gallery when Maya sings out, “Clock strikes upon the hour and the sun begins to fade.” She looks up searching for Maya and sees her stand up from her chair, placing both hands on her desk dramatically. Her shoulders collapse and she ducks her head down as she sings, “Still enough time to figure out how to chase my blues away.” 

Clarke looks around the office to see if anyone else has noticed, but everyone is working away, paying Maya no mind. _Weird._

Maya looks back up and starts jazz walking to the front of her desk while singing the next line, “I've done alright up to now; it's the light of day that shows me how.” She takes a seat on her desk and does a fan kick to finish the first verse, “And when the night falls, loneliness calls.” 

Clarke is seriously concerned that no one else is bothered by Maya belting out the chorus of the song while taking an expensive painting off of the wall, cradling it in her arms and dancing with it. That’s when Clarke realizes she’s hearing Maya’s thoughts through song. 

As she belts out the final, “I wanna dance with somebody–with somebody who loves me,” of the chorus, Maya jazz walks back to her desk, doing a few turns and leaps, and sits back down, typing away at her computer as if she never sang her heart out at 2:54 p.m. on a Thursday. And, technically, she didn’t. 

* * *

“So let me get this straight,” Wells puts down his beer and continues, “You got an MRI. An earthquake happened and made the machine glitch and play a bunch of songs, and now you can hear people’s most personal thoughts through musical numbers.” 

Clarke lets her head fall onto her arms resting on the table with a thud. “You think I’m crazy,” she states. The phenomenon had occurred a few more times between Maya’s rendition of the Whitney Houston classic and meeting her best friend at The Dropship, their favorite bar, the following night.

Wells snorts, “I believe you. I just want to know what witch you pissed off to curse you with this.”

“There’s gotta be a reason this is happening, right? The universe is trying to send me a message.” 

He shrugs. “Only time will tell.” He raises the bottle and tilts it towards someone behind her. “The crew’s arriving,” Wells warns, knowing Clarke wants to keep this a secret.

Clarke looks behind her and spots Raven, Jasper, Monty, Lincoln, and Octavia walking towards their table. As they slide in, Octavia announces that Bellamy and Miller would be joining them soon.

A few hours later, after a small spat with Bellamy over a game of pool, The Weeknd is interrupted by an electric guitar as she’s putting the pool stick back on the wall. With his still in his hand, Bellamy takes slow steps on beat while singing, “She’s cold and she’s cruel, but she knows what she’s doin’.” Clarke looks around to see if anyone else has noticed Bellamy singing––no one has.

He smirks as he looks directly at her and sings, “She pushed me in the pool at our last school reunion.” Clarke most definitely has pushed him in a pool before but not at a school reunion; they didn’t even meet until college when Clarke was Octavia’s rich, privileged roommate and Bellamy was Octavia’s annoying, overprotective asshole of a brother. They started out hating each other but eventually came to a mutual understanding and became best friends. 

Still, Clarke can’t figure out why he’s singing his thoughts to her and why this song? 

Bellamy stops a few feet in front of her, slams the butt of the pool stick on the bar floor on beat, tilting it to the right as he belts out, “She laughs at my dreams, but I dream about her laughter.” 

This line causes Clarke to bunch her eyebrows as she goes through the facts: 

  1. She was hearing Bellamy’s inner thoughts about being in love with someone.
  2. He was singing directly to her. 



_Oh._

_Bellamy might like me?_

Clarke’s thoughts are confirmed when he grabs her hand and spins her in a circle while singing, “Strange as it seems, she’s the one I’m after.” 

As if the situation wasn’t weird enough, Jasper and Monty join Bellamy in singing “Just the Girl” by The Click Five. With perfect choreography, the three begin the chorus, “'Cause she's bittersweet. She knocks me off of my feet.” 

Jasper and Monty continue dancing as Bellamy stops and motions to Clarke again while stomping his right foot, “And I can't help myself, I don't want anyone else.” At the last line, Miller and Raven are added to the mix, joining the boys in their elaborate dance. 

For a moment, Clarke considers the possibility that this is an actual flashmob, but the fact that Octavia, Lincoln, and Wells aren’t even glancing over here and the rest of the bar is continuing on as if nothing is happening signals to Clarke that she really is hearing Bellamy profess his love to her through a song and that he has no idea that it’s happening. 

The five are now in a circle, dancing around Clarke, as they harmonize and finish the chorus. “She's a mystery. She's too much for me, but I keep comin' back for more. She's just the girl I'm lookin' for.” 

The guitar mellows and the kick drum slows to hit on the up-beats as her friends, minus Bellamy, go back to what they were doing before the impromptu dance number. Clarke is still standing in her original spot as Bellamy gives her one last twirl and goes to sit on the pool table. His eyes stay on her as he sways from side to side stating, “She's cold and she's cruel, but she knows what she's doin'. Knows just what to say so my whole day is ruined.” 

Suddenly, he turns his head to the side and finishes with, “You’re just the girl I’m lookin’ for.” 

Clarke looks around as the same The Weeknd song as before starts playing again, and when she looks back at Bellamy, he’s putting the pool stick back on the wall, giving her a strange look. “You alright?” he asks. 

She nods and tells him, “I need another drink.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Like the mature adult she is, Clarke decides to brush off the serenation and push it into the back of her mind–except that The Universe™ has other ideas. 

Bellamy and Clarke are sitting in his office in the history building at the University of Arkadia eating lunch when she gets a call from the local hospital. He watches her face go from confused to anxious and scared. 

Clarke starts gathering her things before she’s even off of the phone. A hand grabs her keys right before she reaches for them, knocking her out of her intense focus. 

“Clarke?” 

“Wells is in the hospital. I have to go,” she rushes out. 

He shakes his head and tosses the keys gently in the air to adjust his grip on them. “You’re not driving while you’re emotional.” 

She takes a deep breath before reminding him, “You have office hours in twenty minutes.” 

Bellamy shakes his head, already on his phone presumably typing out a quick email. “This is more important. I’ll reschedule them.” 

Just when Clarke is starting to calm down enough to rationalize the situation, she hears the unmistakable beginning riff of “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).” 

_Really?_ She asks The Universe™. _Now?_

Bellamy grabs her wrist and guides her out the door without even locking it. As they walk down the hall towards the stairs, he sings, “When I wake up, well I know I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be the man who wakes up next to you.” He opens the door to the stairwell, swapping places so that she’s in front of him as they hurry down the stairs. He continues, “When I go out, yeah I know I'm gonna be–I'm gonna be the man who goes along with you.” 

When they’re out of the building, some college students run in between them, knocking Clarke’s right shoulder back. The sound of the collision is on beat. Before she can react to it, Bellamy’s hand is on the small of her back, guiding her to his car in a nearby parking lot. During this interaction, he’s singing, “If I get drunk, well I know I'm gonna be–I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you.” 

Time feels like it’s simultaneously standing still and fastforwarding at three times its normal rate. When they’re in the car, he places an arm on the back of her seat to look behind him to back his jeep out of the parking lot. Instead, he pauses and looks into her eyes and delivers the line, “And if I grow old, well, I know I'm gonna be–I'm gonna be the man who's growing old with you.” 

His gaze is ripped from hers as he speeds out of the parking lot and onto the busy streets. Traffic is on their sides, as they don’t hit any redlights. While he’s singing the chorus, his hand finds Clarke’s resting on her thigh. He rubs comforting circles into it. 

If Clarke wasn’t having trouble breathing before, she definitely was now. She takes his hand and holds it closer to her body. She blames it on the song. 

It comes to an end after the chorus just as they pull into the parking lot. As Clarke is unbuckling her seatbelt, Bellamy squeezes her hand. He raises his eyebrows as he asks, “Together?” 

She nods. “Together.” 

Clarke lies to the front desk and says Wells is her step-brother so that they’ll tell her what happened and when she can see him. 

She almost feels ridiculous when a nurse tells her it was only a minor car accident that left him with broken arm and nose from the airbag and that she can see him before he goes into surgery. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s later when she’s talking to the doctor about the physical therapy he’ll need in a couple of weeks when she hears a muffled piano playing. She excuses herself and ventures into the hallway. Clarke hears Bellamy’s voice before she sees him. 

It’s the same song as before, but it’s now a ballad. The roughness of his voice is heard more clearly when he sings, “When I come home, yeah, I know I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be the man who's coming home to you.” 

When she turns the corner and walks towards the waiting room, she sees him. He’s leaning on a wall while the rest of her friends are sitting in a corner chatting. Bellamy senses her presence and turns his head to face her. “And when I'm dreaming, well, I know I'm gonna dream. I'm gonna dream about the time when I'm with you.” 

He starts walking towards her as he sings the chorus, “But I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more.” He stops when they’re still a few feet apart and ends with, “Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door.” 

The look in his eyes confirms, once again, that Bellamy Blake is definitely in love with Clarke Griffin. 

It’s then that she starts considering the possibility of having the same feelings for him. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Clarke was still mulling over her feelings for Bellamy and considering how she should confront them when he starts singing to her a third time. She’s been trying to give herself space away from him to figure out her feelings, but she couldn’t resist getting takeout and watching a documentary with him when he asked. They’re eating takeout on his couch before the watching documentary. Clarke is telling him about a new exhibit at the art gallery she helped put together. Her legs are draped across his lap while he unconsciously rubs circles on her ankles. 

She’s used to the two of them showing affection towards each other in ways they don’t towards their other friends, but Clarke’s always thought their closeness was just platonic and that there was a clear line keeping their friendship from being something more. And maybe it did start out as platonic but has slowly morphed into something more. Ever since Bellamy first sang to her, she hasn’t been sure where the line was anymore. The more she thinks about it, the more it disappears and she finds herself wanting to go into the uncharted territory. 

Clarke glances up at Bellamy while shoving more noodles in her mouth. She notices a smirk beginning to form and a softness in his eyes as low bass starts filling her ears. Her breath hitches in her throat.

She knows what’s about to happen, and it causes her chest to tighten. An emotion she can’t immediately pinpoint replaces the anxiety she briefly felt. 

Bellamy’s gaze is still fixed on her as he starts singing, “Drink all night, never sleep. You say ‘go,’ I won’t leave.” 

He pulls on Clarke’s legs so she’s closer to him and almost sitting on his lap. His hand strokes the side of her face as he continues with, “I love you, you love me.” When he sings, “but not in the same way,” he slides Clarke off his lap and turns his head away from her. 

Bellamy then stands up and pulls Clarke to her feet. As he gives her a quick twirl, he sings “Rip my heart out and leave. On the floor, watch me bleed.” 

It’s the second time he sings, “I love you, you love me, but not in the same way,” that she realizes he’s wrong. 

As he sings the first verse, she thinks about how their relationship has evolved from enemies to friends and then from best friends to something more. As much as she wants to believe the line between friends and lovers has just recently disappeared, she knows it’s been long gone. She’s been in love with Bellamy longer than she realizes. 

Bellamy moves onto the pre-chorus, and Clarke recognizes the feeling from earlier as relief. Instead of dreading hearing Bellamy’s inner thoughts through song, she was relieved to know he had romantic feelings for her. 

By the time he’s singing the chorus again, he’s pulled her into the kitchen. Bellamy places his hands on her hips and lifts her so that she’s sitting on top of the counter. He continues to dance around her, occasionally putting his hands on her thigh or knee as part of a dance move he does. The contact makes her face heat up, but she can’t say it’s unwelcomed. 

When he’s nearing the end of the chorus, he grabs her by the hands and pulls her off of the counter and back into the living room. As he sings, “Rip my heart out and leave. On the floor, watch me bleed,” he pushes her gently onto the couch where she was originally sitting. With the next line, “I love you, you love me,” he sits next to her and puts her feet back in his lap. 

He finishes with “But not in the same way,” and the look in his eyes makes Clarke’s chest tighten. His hands return to where they were on her ankles, and when she blinks it’s almost like it never happened and that it was a figment of her imagination. 

It takes her a moment to remember that it _didn’t_ happen and it technically _was_ a figment of her imagination. 

“Clarke?” Bellamy calls. His hands have stopped rubbing circles onto her skin. 

She hums in response but doesn’t meet his eyes. Instead, she digs her chopsticks into the takeout and pushes the food around. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. 

When she doesn’t answer, Bellamy puts a hand over the hand holding the chopsticks. “Clarke, whatever it is that’s been bothering you, you can tell me. You’ve been acting differently lately.” 

Clarke shifts uncomfortably, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Different how?” she questions. 

Bellamy clears his throat. “Okay, well. You’ve been really spacey. Like zoning out in the middle of conversations. And it feels like you’ve been avoiding me?” His face falls. “Whatever I did to make you avoid me, please tell me, princess.”

Clarke chews on her bottom lip. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.” 

He deadpans, “Have you met my sister?” 

The edges of Clarke’s lips jump up for a moment. “A different kind of crazy.” 

“I can handle it, princess.” 

Clarke takes a deep breath before explaining, “Okay, so, two weeks ago I had an MRI. Everything is fine, before you start worrying, but–uh–I let the technologist play his music during it, and you know I’m not a music girl. I was in the machine when that earthquake happened and the machine malfunctioned and all these songs started playing at once” 

Bellamy looks confused and starts to say something, so Clarke puts her hand up to stop him. “I need you to let me finish.” 

He nods, so she continues, “So ever since then, I’ve been having these weird experiences? I was walking down the street afterwards and all of the strangers just started singing a song and there was music and choreography and everything. But no one could see it except for me. They were singing their inner thoughts in the form of a song” 

Bellamy starts to lean back. His face looks like he’s trying to process what she’s just told him. 

“And then it kept happening. My coworker Maya sang about being lonely and wanting to dance with somebody. More strangers sang to me about their problems and their thoughts. And then,” she hesitates. 

Clarke isn’t sure she should be telling Bellamy all of this, but if she’s going to confess that she loves him then she doesn’t want to have any other secrets between them.

She continues, “And then you sang to me. At first, I wasn’t sure that it was _to_ me but the way you looked at me was so real and raw. The first time it was ‘Just the Girl’ by The Click Five, and some of our friends joined in on the dance. It was after we finished playing pool last Friday. And then the day Wells got into his accident, you sang ‘I’m Gonna Be’ on the way to the hospital. You know? The _500 Miles_ song? And then just now. You got up and sang ‘Not in the Same Way’ by 5 Seconds of Summer.”

She takes a deep breath. “Bellamy, I need to know if you love me or not. Because if you’re _not_ subconsciously singing to me that you love me and I sound crazy, we can pretend that this conversation never happened. But if that last song is any indication of what you’re feeling, I need you to know that I do. I do love you, and it’s in the same way that you love me.” 

Clarke feels like there’s been a weight lifted off of her chest and that she can breathe freely again. She focuses on that feeling for a few moments until she realizes that Bellamy hasn’t said anything since her confession. 

She looks up and calls, “Bell?” 

He’s staring at her with a look she can’t identify. For a minute, Clarke begins to think that she’s ruined their friendship and she’ll never be able to look at him again. She starts thinking about how much money she has saved and whether or not she can afford to flee the country in embarrassment. 

But then Bellamy’s hands are on her ankles again. Clarke gets a sense of déjà vu when he pulls her into his lap in the same way he did when he was singing to her. His hands then grab hers, and he gives her a soft smile as they look into each other's eyes.

“Does it sound crazy?” He pauses before answering, “Yes. But I believe you, princess.” 

He lets go of her hands and puts his on either side of her face. “Clarke, I’ve loved you for years. I’m _so_ in love with you.”

She doesn’t even think before she grabs his face and kisses him. It’s passionate and rough but slows down into a softer kiss. 

When they pull apart, she rests her forehead on his and says, “I can’t believe we were so hopeless at admitting our feelings for each other that The Universe™ had to intervene and give me superpowers.” 

He laughs and asks, “Got any other ideas on how to put your powers to good use?” 

Clarke gives him a smile and runs her fingers through his hair. “Maybe another day. I’ve got more important plans tonight.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Stay tuned for spin-offs where Clarke uses her powers to help others!


End file.
